What an hour really costs, what you have really ordered, and what the job really made.
Two things quietly take a small builder’s margin, and neither of them shows up on a normal job sheet: labour priced at the wage rather than what an hour on site actually costs, and material orders that have been placed but not yet invoiced. A job can look fine all year and pay for nothing.
What is in it
- True cost of a productive hour, worked out from wage, on-costs, holiday and unbillable time
- Committed and invoiced kept in separate columns, so a live job cannot flatter itself
- TRUE PROFIT shown beside what an ordinary job sheet would have told you
- Variations with a status — only the agreed ones count towards the contract
- Retention held separately, with the date it is due back
Who it is for
Builders, electricians, plumbers, joiners and anyone running two to twenty people.
How it works
Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, and Google Sheets — upload the file and
open it with Sheets, every formula works. LibreOffice too. No macros, no add-ons, no account
to create and nothing to install.
The download is instant. Every workbook ships twice: one with a worked example already
filled in so you can see what each column expects, and the same file completely blank for your
own numbers. A plain-English Start Here guide comes with it as a PDF.
Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the
buyer protection are all handled by Etsy. I never ask for access to anything —
no password, no manager invite, no app permissions. You download a file; that is the whole
transaction.